Her family's lucky coin.
Oh no.
"Miss." A voice from the top of the stairs. One of the event's security detail, broad-shouldered in a green-sashed jacket, peering down at me with the expression of a man whose evening has taken an unexpected direction. "The mixer hasn't concluded. The announcement?—"
"I know!" I wince. "I know, I'm sorry, I have to catch the train?—"
"The selection isn't?—"
"I checked in. I was present for the required hour. I did my part!"
I did.
I confirmed that rule three times before I agreed to attend, because I had zero plans to stay for the full event. Never had those plans. I walked in with my exit strategy already mapped, because that is the kind of optimism I can actually afford—the kind with contingencies.
A long pause from the top of the stairs.
Bureaucratic conflict, audible.
I look back down at the coin.
Pick it up, Mila. It's Elowen's family heirloom. You bend down, you grab the coin, you put it in your purse?—
In the purse. That is now closed, because the clasp came loose somewhere in the skirt situation, and the coin is on step four, and bending over in this architectural nightmare of a gown while a security guard watches from above and the clock reads 12:06?—
Leave it.
Don't leave it, it's Elowen's?—
Leave it.
Fuck…
I leave it.
Not because I can't manage the logistics, though I can't, and not just because time is actively running out, though it is. Something else. Something I can't quite put into words standing on a stone staircase in a castle at 12:06 in formal wear, something that feels like the coin having already decided on a different direction. Elowen said the life-rearranging kind. Maybe it finds its own way there.
Maybe someone in this old building needs it more than a woman who's already made her peace with luck being a concept that applies to other people.
Or you're rationalizing because you have nine minutes and the dress situation is critical. Both things can be true.
"Sorry!" I call up to the security guard. "Appreciate the event! Lovely castle! Incredible floral arrangements!"
I go down the rest of the stairs at full speed.
The east exit deposits me into the night with the efficiency of a building that's done with me, the heavy door swinging shut behind me, and the cold comes in immediately—March refusing, as always, to make peace with the idea of spring. It's sharp and clean, and it hits the warm flush of too much candlelightand one shot of Jameson and forty-five minutes of extremely questionable decision-making and actually, honestly, it helps.
I can see the town from here. Small and lit and quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists in places where people go to bed at a reasonable hour. And beyond it—there—the iron trestle of the station.
Five minutes away. Elowen confirmed it. Elowen, who planned my exit route with the thoroughness of a woman who has been enabling my chaos for six years and has learned to plan for it.
My phone says 12:08.
Seven minutes. Seven minutes to a five-minute destination. That's fine. That's mathematically fine.
Except that's the departure time and not the boarding time, and this particular line has been running early since November, because whoever manages the Oakhaven schedule believes in surprise as a transit philosophy?—
I run.
